Weirdness

Monday, June 30, 2008

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mra9aUOwwfA&feature=relatedI've written about it before, but it bears repeating. Back in '71 I'd go cruising with my cousins in my (future) cousin-in-laws hot rod up and down the streets of Montrose, Colorado, (Thanks, Rob!). Sooner or later, we'd end up at the Tastee Freeze, and the Guess Who's Greatest Hits album was ALWAYS playing there - it must have been the only tape they had for their deck. As a consequence, those songs are all burned into my DNA.

There are a couple of less dramatic examples that I've heard of; and a minor one I've seen. Just North of Montrose, Colorado there was some sort of sawdust fire that I remember seeing as a kid. My memory of the cause is kind of cloudy now, (maybe one of my cousins out there can help me out), but I think there was a large dumping of sawdust from one of the local lumber mills out in the 'dobes. It filled in the numerous caves and crevices that are found there and caught fire, (it wouldn't surprise me if it was spontaneous combustion like you get in grain mills...). I think it gently burned through the compacted sawdust for several years; and I remember driving by and seeing the reddish glow at night from the ground.

Monday, June 23, 2008

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Dgaz6NIUFkThis was sent to me by my friend, Mathew (Thanks!). These things creep me out. His message to me is better than anything I could think to say:"Here, we see a design prototype for a nightmare future from some students at the Design Academy of Eindhoven in the Netherlands. It's a robot chair that follows you around a library - like a Dalek from a Doctor Who episode. These chairs will clearly be the advance guard in the robot uprising, doggedly trailing humans and encouraging them to take the weight off their feet, leading to a tendency for sloth and idleness that will leave mankind too chubby and indolent to fight off the mechanical hordes. No matter where you run, the robot chair will follow you. It will follow you to your grave. "

Am I the only one disturbed that fascism is just a verse away when one starts singing their anthem? Can't they find something else? (Of course, Virginia is in the same poisonous situation with its own deplorable anthem, more reasons at to why I'd love NoVa to secede....).

So cool, you can almost feel the hot, lonely, expanses of Texas in their playing. This song was unbelievably popular at places like This Is It, Clancy's, and Good Guys in the summer of '74. Wicked stuff...

I'm extremely disappointed with this method. Mine is much more interesting and entertaining. The train simply roars past the station with all the doors open, and simple Darwinism determines who gets on, and who doesn't....

CRIME!

Man Charged in Silicone 'Pumping Party' Sting Associated Press, June 19, 2008MIAMI --A Miami-Dade County man has been charged with practicing medicine illegally at parties where women take shots of silicone to maketheir butts bigger.The Florida Department of Health announced the arrest Thursday ofAnthony Donnell Solomon for the unlicensed practice of a health careprofession. Investigators said they learned Solomon was providing cosmetic procedures for women at so-called "pumping parties" in May.Authorities set up a fake party at a hotel and arranged for Solomon to attend. Investigators said he was arrested after he agreed to inject an undercover detective. It was not clear if he had an attorney.The state said Solomon has never been licensed by the Florida Departmentof Health, which has warned that silicone injections can be harmful and potentially cause serious infections.

Friday, June 20, 2008

Yawn, I'm unimpressed.... Channel 20 was broadcasting in 3-D decades ago. I still have the glasses they provided. I watched The Creature From The Black Lagoon in 3-D on my wedding night, (just call me a sentimental old fool....)

What can you say, but another individual who needs no introduction. Is the intro to California Girls the most famous, and best, of all time? And is there any prettier love song than God Only Knows? Essential.

I heard about some awards show recently, where Ellen DeGeneres was to introduce Paul. She got up in front of the microphone, and simply said "And now, a man who needs no introduction...", and then walked off! Brilliant - and true. I'm sure it seems silly to most outside of my generation the importance, and indeed the reverence, that the Beatles are still held in. It is a complicated explanation dealing with such factors as lost youth and innocence, as well as rebellion and exploration. In the end, it just comes down to a simple point: you had to be there.... As for his later work, I know, it's inconsistent. But Paul has always been in there pitching. I think the failures have been sincere ones - an artist experimenting, not always successfully; but never a cynical attempt to cash in, (Maccaw hardly needs cash...). And as I get older, I also see new things and gain new appreciation for things I was once pretty disdainful of. Once in awhile, at the end of a hot summer day, coming home from work, I can enjoy a silly love song...

This is the strangest damn thing I've been hearing about for the past few weeks. Why ONLY feet? And I love the quote: "there's no evidence the feet were severed or removed from the victims' legs by force." Okay....how else does one remove a foot??? Did it rot off? I need some help here, I'm not some sort of forensic guru; but if a body is falling apart enough for a foot to become disengaged from it, isn't the foot itself so far gone that it's falling apart too, and unlikely to make it to shore before being torn apart by fish, bacteria, the current, etc.? If we're talking a foot in good condition, then how could it NOT be torn from a body with great force? I clearly need expert opinion on this, probably from a ghoul. I only know one, but he owes me a favor...

Happy Fathers Day!

I've written before that I know that family relations and politics are always tricky. For those of you who are fathers, I hope you have a fun day with your family. For those of you whose fathers are still around, I am supremely envious.

What's next, Robot Monster? The Creeping Terror? They Saved Hitler's Brain? First Plan 9, and now this! If you've no idea what I'm talking about, consider yourself culturally deprived, (as opposed to those of us who are culturally depraved), and google on "Manos - The Hands Of Fate" - one of the most intriguingly bad movies ever made, featuringTorgo, the Igor-like minion who some of us are absolutely obsessed by.

Premiered on this date in 1969. One of my fave Westerns. Filmed in and around Ridgway Colorado and the beautiful San Juan Mountains. One of John Wayne's best roles; the kind an actor needs a lifetime perfecting a given image to portray well.

Monday, June 09, 2008

A bad day in Byzantium...

It's hotter than a whore on nickle night here - at least 98 degrees. In addition, I had to drive into Old Town this afternoon by means of Braddock Road. And the radio, for once, was playing great tunes, but here I am, shuffling along at 15mph with uncoordinated traffic lights and stuck behind drivers who knew Moses personally and whose licenses are personally signed by King Nebukenezer and then Radar Love comes on the radio, and it's all I can do to hit second gear behind these sclerotic geezers and then I get home to discover (horrors!) that we're nearly out of Virginia Gentleman. Well, there's only so much a man can take...At any rate here are some tunes for a stinker of a day in NoVa...

A hack writer, but THE best editor and promoter of modern Fantasy literature, ever. An entire generation of fans of the genre owe Lin a great debt for helping keep alive and increasing the presence of Lord Dunsany, H.P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, Jack Vance, Michael Moorcock, Robert E. Howard and dozens more.

I would point out that as impressive as it was, the V-2 was not without substantial downsides. While terrifying and deadly, it was notoriously inaccurate. What the article doesn't point out is that the reason that London and Antwerp were targeted was because they were two of the few places big enough to guarantee some sort of hit! The monetary costs were staggering too. Perhaps newer and more accurate information has come to light in the past twenty years, but a while back I saw comparisons that showed the average monetary amount of damage from a V-2 was slightly LESS than the cost of the rocket to the Germans! It could still have tremendous psychological value, (they were starting to talk about evacuating London, a real blow to British pride and governmental effectiveness), but when one starts talking about throwing money at each other in late '44 and early '45, America alone trumps Germany by a factor of, oh, let's say 25-1.

Wonderful voice and material. Stella and I used to work together at the record store, and had a lot of fun discussing religion and music. There are nice snippets at CDBaby for you to listen to, please check it out. Buy hundreds!

Ah yes, hot sultry summer of '70. Vacationing in Madison, haunting its wonderful bookstores and head shops. Back to DC, going into Gtown with Edmund and Millie to canoe at Fletcher's boathouse and then stop off in town to pick up the latest issue of the Quicksilver Times. Going out for records on Friday night at Giant Music. With this tune and the Temp's Ball of Confusion playing constantly on the radio.

Wednesday, June 04, 2008

I'm waiting for the rain of toads...

Moses would be proud. Just to update folks, NoVa seems to be getting rocked by a variety of storms. We had a horrendous squall hit our neighborhood, at least one 150lb tree limb is now sitting in our backyard. There are conflictingreports that a tornado touched down in Annandale, and another in Falls Church; and there are hail stones supposedly as big as baseballs (!) in Fredericksburg. But as of now, we and the Manor are safe, sound, and unrepentent...

An amazing and important battle in a war that was full of them. One of the greatest American victories - ever. And a turning point in the war in the Pacific. Japan lost the war in June of '42. After that, nothing was going to save them. The first sea battle between fleets of ships that never saw each other.

Last year News of the Weird reported on an organic art project, "Victimless Leather," in which artists Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr attempted to grow embryonic stem cells of a species onto an artificial platform, in this case creating leather from mouse cells without the need to kill cows. However, in the latest demonstration of the project, at New York City's Museum of Modern Art this spring, the exhibit apparently grew so rapidly that it overwhelmed the space available, and curator Paola Antonelli said she was forced to kill the organism. She told the Art Newspaper that it was a difficult decision. "I've always been pro-choice, and all of a sudden I'm here not sleeping at night about killing a coat." [The Art Newspaper, 5-1-08]

In the old days I was told to worry about the unborn, now it's the unworn...

Sunday, June 01, 2008

Muddling Along...

What do you do for a wedding anniversary where one of the partners is dead? You really can't ignore it. And "celebration" doesn't make it at all. It would have been my folks' 62nd tomorrow. I'll take my Mother to dinner, and it'll be sad and strange and full of awkward silences, and next year will be the same and so on until the inevitable passing of one of us. Life is often a matter of failures and losses. Some of them one never gets past, and my Father's death is the one for me. I find that growing older becomes largely a matter of tallying up those losses, whether it is loved ones, favored places, opportunities or health. So be it. See ya tomorrow...

My fave ghost host, Count Gore, is showing The Werewolf Of Washington this week on his webcast. It was a rather poor attempt at making a horror movie satire about the whole Watergate-era government. But one always feels drawn to films about their hometown. As always, I highly recommend Count Gore and his site for news and reviews in the horror field.

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Greetings!
This site will be devoted to all the funny, weird, disturbing, and unusual stuff I find or am sent. This will include pictures, games, comics, cartoons, articles, jokes, and anomalies. Enjoy!